Written for the Nova Scotia Business Journal
If you’ve been functioning in your comfort zone on a day-to-day basis, feeling more or less satisfied with your selling activity, then it’s a good bet that you are producing at a level below your capacity. That’s because reaching higher levels of success almost always involves change, which consequently requires you to venture out of your comfort zone.
In order to change and grow — personally and professionally — you have to modify your behaviour and do things a little differently than you have before. You will have to alter some preconceived ideas about what is appropriate, how prospects think and act, what people will think of you, and, most importantly, what you, yourself, are capable of accomplishing.
As if making those kinds of changes weren’t enough, you’ll also need to learn to act with confidence and courage at times when you’re not feeling particularly confident or courageous. You’ll have to develop the discipline to focus on the task at hand when you’d much rather be doing something else. And you’ll need to disengage from some reactions and behaviours that have become second nature to you. All of these changes are prerequisites to building dramatic growth in sales.
While growth may not be easy, it is possible. But it takes a commitment to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Many people make commitments to getting things done, and then almost immediately make excuses why they can’t. “It’s too tough”… “It’ll take too long”… “I didn’t realize it was this involved” are all common reasons for backing out of a commitment and abandoning the opportunity to grow.
The key is to keep the commitment for a minimum of 90 days. Push yourself one day at a time to stay the course. Don’t allow adversity and your own head trash and negative self-talk to spoil your belief system and the opportunity you started with. The single biggest barrier to our success is often the space between our ears. We have to win that battle first.
©2012 Sandler Training Inc. (www.atlantic.sandler.com) is an international sales and management training/consulting firm. For a free copy of Why Salespeople Fail And What To Do About It, call Sandler Training at 902-481-0773 or e-mail salescareers@sandler.com
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